Tag Archives: digital image

Female Power Project, perSISTERS designs, What I'm Making

PAY ATTENTION honoring Rachel Carson

Revised design, August 2018

Here is a new perSISTERS design in the #FemalePowerProject for Rachel Carson.

First it is important to understand the times in which Rachel Carson’s attention changed the world. Nature was perceived as a threatening realm in opposition to humans, something that we need to control. Humans were making amazing progress in that regard. The late 1950s was a time of unprecedented prosperity that depended on the exploitation of technologies which had flourished because of wartime investment.

The US and its allies had recently vanquished fascism while creating explosions rivaled only by volcanic forces. It seemed like “man” could do anything: conquer disease with antibiotics; stop plaques with pesticides; create amazing yields with synthetic fertilizers; and…kill billions of living things with one explosion. Not just the explosion—it was the rain of nuclear fallout that spread far and wide afterwards that could wipe out whole populations—something that could not be seen or tasted or touched. This eventually created a profound anxiety. The immense power to control nature first created an optimism about human progress. It took a while for people to realize that this control was also a frightening power that was being deployed heedlessly and without forethought. Rachel Carson was responsible for that reorientation.

Carson had described nature (mostly the shore and the sea) with beautiful language that created a feeling for the delicate and amazing web of interconnected lives and processes. This aesthetic dimension was essential to the power of her message. It could motivate people to cherish the living web that held us up. Not just because humans might perish without it, but also because it is worth saving in itself—it has a value outside of human utility. That is stewardship, a value on which the environmental movement would be founded. Carson saw that human arrogance was outrunning wisdom and she sought to put them in balance. This was accomplished by widening our scope of examination in space and in time. The effects of certain agents might not be evident here and now, but in more distant places and times.

Carson also saw that scientific research was affected by the profit motive of corporations and she called for decisions to made based on more impartial science. One of her biographers, Linda Lear, says in The American Experience
“She is calling for the population to understand that money has a great deal to do with what is done in science. We need to ask who speaks and why. What is done in the name of science and why doesn’t the public have a right to know? These are not just scientific questions. These are questions that a social revolutionary asks.”

Rachel Carson’s goal was to shift the paradigm about humans and nature. She accomplished this not as a scientist, but as a master synthesizer of scientific information and a gifted communicator of science. She also fought hard to convince those in power to heed her alarm. This they did. And she accomplished this before she died of breast cancer at 56.

from Wikipedia:
Rachel Louise Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964) was an American marine biologist, author, and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement.

Carson began her career as an aquatic biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in the 1950s. Her widely praised 1951 bestseller The Sea Around Us won her a U.S. National Book Award and recognition as a gifted writer. Her next book, The Edge of the Sea, and the reissued version of her first book, Under the Sea Wind, were also bestsellers. This sea trilogy explores the whole of ocean life from the shores to the depths.

Late in the 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation, especially some problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was the book Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented share of the American people. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides. It also inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Female Power Project, Nasty RZY

Meet Nasty RZY

What is she about to do with that fist?
In which the artist explores the rhetoric of vulgarity within the feminist discourse of anger…

Here is a new body of work in the Female Power Project: Nasty RZY

RZY (“Rosie”) has some things she would like to say and sometimes the most direct language is the most effective. When you’re this angry you are entitled to roll up your sleeves and speak clearly. Is there a decorous and feminine way to express anger? Is it still anger? Can you stomach more anger if it is sweetened and mediated? Does a spoon full of humor help the medicine go down? What if you have to look harder to see the anger—if you have to work to make out the words—what if you can let it sink in slower? Can you digest it then? [What if you make every statement into a question?] Maybe then it can be a seed of power. Maybe then it can communicate. It’s a funny thing to make artwork that I am afraid to speak its name when people come to the studio. Maybe this is work for me, too. That is what RZY SEZ.

Female Power Project, perSISTERS designs

use PRIVILEGE to sow JUSTICE

USE PRIVILEGE to sow JUSTICE for Eleanor Roosevelt, perSISTERS print in the Female Power Project

Current design for Eleanor Roosevelt

[The] recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world …

from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages.

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962) was an American politician, diplomat, and activist. She was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, having held the post from March 1933 to April 1945 during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four terms in office, and served as United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952. President Harry S. Truman later called her the “First Lady of the World” in tribute to her human rights achievements.

Eleanor and Franklin’s marriage was always complicated, and she resolved to seek fulfillment in a public life of her own. She persuaded Franklin to stay in politics after he was stricken with debilitating polio in 1921, and Roosevelt began giving speeches and appearing at campaign events in his place. Following Franklin’s election as Governor of New York in 1928, and throughout the remainder of Franklin’s public career in government, Roosevelt regularly made public appearances on his behalf, and as First Lady while her husband served as President, she significantly reshaped and redefined the role of that office during her own tenure and beyond, for future First Ladies.

Though widely respected in her later years, Roosevelt was a controversial First Lady at the time for her outspokenness, particularly her stance on racial issues. She was the first presidential spouse to hold regular press conferences, write a daily newspaper column, write a monthly magazine column, host a weekly radio show, and speak at a national party convention. On a few occasions, she publicly disagreed with her husband’s policies, including the decision to intern Americans of Japanese descent. She advocated for expanded roles for women in the workplace, the civil rights of African Americans and Asian Americans, and the rights of World War II refugees.

Following her husband’s death in 1945, Roosevelt remained active in politics for the remaining 17 years of her life. She pressed the United States to join and support the United Nations and became its first delegate. She served as the first chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights, and oversaw the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Later she chaired the John F. Kennedy administration’s Presidential Commission on the Status of Women. By the time of her death, Roosevelt was regarded as “one of the most esteemed women in the world”; she was called “the object of almost universal respect” in her New York Times obituary.

Adapted from Wikipedia